VR Chess

My first assignment at E2i Creative Studio was an assessment test. I was asked to make a VR chess game with Unity, either in 3D or using Canvas. I decided to go the 3D route, because I didn’t think that playing chess on a flat UI would be very exciting in VR. I had never worked with VR before this, and I only had three weeks to do it. (I also didn’t quite remember how chess worked…)

My biggest challenge was not always having a VR headset of my own to work with. I was able to work around this by downloading a VR simulator – that’s how I tested the logic for the chess movement. However, object interactivity with the simulator I was using and with the actual Vive required the pieces to be set up totally differently. Since this project, I have been experimenting with different ways to work around that.

Gameplay:

The player stands on top of a giant chessboard.

Since it is technically a single-player game, the player controls both sides, taking turns as either pink or blue respectively.

Pink goes first, so the laser pointer that comes from the controller is pink.

When the player points at a pink piece, it highlights, and the squares that represent that piece’s legal moves are outlined in pink on the board.

Squares that hold captureable pieces are outlined in purple.

If the player tries to point at a blue piece while it’s pink’s turn, the pointer turns red, and that piece does not get highlighted (nor does its legal moves).

After pink makes a move, the controls switch over to blue.

Please note that the chess piece models were downloaded from the Unity Asset Store.

Below is a screenshot of the game being played using the VRTK simulator.